Sometimes The Best Thing You Can Say About The Day Is “Hey, At Least I Didn’t Have To Wear The Pizza Suit.” Part Number B.

Okay, first, go read this, o! yee who don’t sit at their computer all weekend waiting patiently, crying, and prostrate with grief until I posted something obviously deep and meaningful here. Because who has better stuff to do on the weekend?

(don’t answer that)

Rick, one of the delivery drivers, acted first. He swooped down, all 6 feet of him, and grabbed the pizza suit from Cesar and held it up to his burly chest before running into the bathroom with it. He emerged, several minutes later, as a slice of pizza. A HUMAN slice of pizza with his face sticking merrily out of the middle of the slice.

It was just too much. I nearly soiled myself.

Who the hell thinks that a human dressing up as food is anything other than a) humiliating or b) hilarious? Phil had, obviously, seen this as an amazing way to attract attention and perhaps increase profits tenfold, but his thinking was predictably flawed.

While a dancing slice of pizza was sure to attract attention–the same way an afro on a white man attracts attention: it was, of course, the wrong KIND of attention. And it was such a uniquely Phil way of doing things, just like standing in front of the single pop machine during the dinner rush to inform some server or another that they were using too many napkins. Valid point, stupid timing. Could be the slogan for restaurant GM’s.

But for us, all of whom had been interrogated at one point or another about the Curious Incident Of The Cheese And The Nighttime, it was just that much more hysterical. I mean, really, a dancing PIZZA?

For the next several weeks, during the start of the dinner rush, well before the drivers were needed to shlep pizzas back and forth, the delivery drivers would take turns putting on the pizza suit and running through the dining room. I’m fairly certain that in this manner, many children were suitably traumatized. But it never failed to make us laugh: this a stupid, corny costume.

Once in awhile, Phil would convince one of the poor line cooks (poor as in the take-pity-on-him not in the broke-as-a-joke way.) during a slow lunch shift to go to the nearby road to wave at passing cars. As far as I know, it never attracted a soul into the restaurant to drop some bucks, but 50 million marketing geniuses (genuii?) can’t be wrong. Can they?

One Friday night after work, Rick and I were sitting and counting our tips and having our shift drink together, and I was grumbling and grousing about how he always made more bank than I did. Little did we know that the opportunity of a life-time was about to be hatched.

I don’t know who suggested it thanks, in no small part, to my tall Jack-n-diet-coke, I can’t full take credit for it so instead I will simply say that we mutually came up with a brilliant plan. The following Thursday night, when I was off work but while Rick was working, we would meet up at the restaurant so that I could help him deliver his pizzas.

Rick would, we decided, dress up in the pizza costume and deliver the pizza to our unsuspecting victims as a slice of pizza. Because short of throwing Rick into a thong, his bulge hanging out for all the world to see, I couldn’t think of anything weirder than getting a pizza delivered by a slice of pizza.

So that’s just what we did. With my friend from school, Arlene, manning the video camera, we–acting as normally as possible of course–drove Rick’s route that night. He’d ring the doorbell and hand the pizza to the victim while I would help make change. Just like this was the most normal situation. Just a random Thursday night delivering pizzas dressed as a slice of pizza lah-dee-dah.

Acting like this was nothing out of the ordinary was harder than it no doubt sounds.

Arlene took some footage that I am certain would rival The Blair WitchProject for most nauseating camera work on an independent film. I would pay a lot of money to see that footage now, but I haven’t seen Arlene since I graduated college and have no idea where to find her.

Shockingly, not a single person commented on this. Not one soul acted as though anything was out of the ordinary. It was as though we were being Punk’d while we were trying to Punk others.

In our efforts to behave as normally as possible, it seems that the houses we hit were full of people for whom this is an everyday occurrence. Maybe they are always served hot dogs by people dressed as gigantic wieners, Chicago-style. Maybe every ice cream cone is hand scooped by a walking, talking milkshake. In a world where a sandwich is always made by a sandwich, we were mere players; costumed pawns in this parade of nameless, faceless food mascots.

I would totally live in that world, you know. So long as I could make the rest of my family wear sausage costumes. Just so I never have to wear the Santa costume again.

All right, loves, dish: I want to hear about pranks. All kinds of pranks. I’m hoping that the laughter I get from your comments will help with this God-awful headache I’ve had for a couple of months.

And if you’re inclined, you can vote for my happy-crappy (emphasis on the crappy) ass here:

33 Responses to Sometimes The Best Thing You Can Say About The Day Is “Hey, At Least I Didn’t Have To Wear The Pizza Suit.” Part Number B.

That is so disappointing that not one person even commented on it. Maybe they felt sorry for him. All I know, if my pizza delivery dude showed up dressed like a pizza, I would laugh. Probably right in his face.

When I went on spring break in high school, I got a henna tattoo on my ankle. My parents freaked the F out, thinking it was real. I let that go for as long as I could hold the laughter in. The plus side- I let them think that was the worst thing I did all week, and they didn’t ask any more questions. Side note: My apologies to anyone who was unfortunate enough to be in S. Padre, TX circa March 2001 with me and my friends.

I’ve never done any pranks. I’m such a wuss. But I do enjoy them! Only when they happen to someone else though. I’ll have to pay attention to the comments though, maybe I can get some ideas to break my prank-ginity.

My favorite prank when I lived in Chicago was to go up to random people and start a quick conversation and act like we were old friends and then leave them trying to figure out who I was. Most people will try for about 3 minutes to figure it out on there own before they will ask you where they know you from, so I tried to keep it short.
“Hi! It’s so great to see you! I wish I had more time to catch up, but I’ve got to catch a (bus, train, movie). We’ll have to catch up next time. Great seeing you”

I also used to give bad directions to tourists, but that wasn’t so much a prank as punishing them for being unprepared in a big city.

No pranks…just the thought that I feel sorely ripped off having my pizza delivered by regular ‘people’ dressed as teenagers who really wish they weren’t out delivering pizza.
Good thing you didn’t have to deliver to college dorms where some may have been a bit, um, stoned and suffereing from a bad case o the munchies. You might have been eaten alive!!! Shudder~~~~~the thought of it.

“In a world where a sandwich is always made by a sandwich” – Have I told you lately that I love you?

Only Becky.

As for pranks, back in highschool we once “forked” someone’s yard (I can’t even remember who – isn’t that sad?). Essentially like TPing something, only with lots of plastic forks stuck in the ground. We thought this was GENIUS.

My 2 bff and I made FLASHER costumes at Halloween and went to bars and messed with everyone, and I mean messed with EVERYONE.
We had great fun in making our Male parts. Yes, we were mail Flashers! Complete with the short and curlies, chest hairs and the most beautiful penis’s you have ever seen.
We would even go into *both* bathrooms at bars. We didnt want anyone to know if we were male or female. Oh we went to all the bowling alleys in town also. You shoulda seen us pumping gas.
Oh.. one of my gf just sent me a post on my birthday this year of us at the gas station posing with 2 dudes pumping gas while we flashed the camera.

LMAO! That is too funny! I was feeling all young-and-conspiratorial just reading it. Tee hee. I imagine I wouldn’t say anything if our pizza delivery guy showed up in a pizza costume… I would probably question my sanity when I closed the door, but that’s a common occurance anyway.

lol , thats 2 funny . i think the worst prank i would have to play on someone was a drinking prank . back in high school my boyfriend of the time had his own place and we would go there to party. it was the place. his best friend and my good friend drank rum and he was a cheep drunk. we use to get him talking and pour him a shot of his rum . then get him to talk some more and slowly we would pass off the bottle to someone who would wander away without him noticing and hid the bottle. he would then after 15 mins , start looking around for his bottle and then have to get up and search the house.

this one time , while he was searching we put the bottle in his back pocket and he wandered around for 3 hours searching for this bottle.

I damn sure would have at least giggled if I opened the door to a huge slice of pizza.

Alas, I am not a prankster, though I once convinced a boyfriend that I had a strap-on in my bag (and intended to use it on him). He freaked the fuck out as I laughed my ass off.

I guess I can tell you about the Fireman’s joke he played on April Fool’s day. He has 3 older sisters, and they decided to prank their mother. One sister told her she was moving to another state, one sister said she was pregnant, due in the summer, (I can’t remember what the other sister did), and he told her that he was getting married in the summer. The thing about it was, she didn’t catch on until the fourth thing, whichever one it was. To him, she said, “How long have you guys known each other? You didn’t even bring her to Easter! How can you marry someone I’ve never even met!?!?!” It was pretty damn funny.

Back in my bar hopping days my best friend and I would get all liquored up and go for burgers after the bars closed. We would ask for lots of extra (sliced) pickles on the side and then go and “pickle” people’s car windshields. It was always people we knew. We would spell out words or switch it out for olives and stuff.

Then one night I pickled my bestfriend’s car and the pickles all stuck to her windshield in the blazing morning sun. She was sooooo mad at me that I never did it again.

Find a computer-challenged individual. When they aren’t at their computer, press control-alt-arrow key. It will flip the monitor view. Then watch them try to figur out how to fix it. This is not a prank I’ve pulled yet, but I’m filing it away and can’t wait to try it on my boss, who has trouble using control-c for copy and control-v for paste.

When we were about 13 we got the idea to play a prank on one of our friends. We told him to ask another one of our friends about her dad, because he was some kind of incredible soccer player. We totally pumped him up about it and then sent him off to ask her. He goes up to her and says “I hear your dad’s a really great soccer player.” She responds with “…You ASSHOLE. My dad doesn’t have any legs!” Then she storms off in her best 13 year old acting mode. The look on his face was hilarious! (Note: Her father was very much in possession of all his limbs, and was a Chicago cop, who used to throw M80’s out the window of his 25th floor apartment)

About 15 years ago, Odwalla had an Ecoli scare with the non-pasteurized OJ that they sold. I worked at a local Starbucks that carried the juice, and we had to wear hazmat suits and and take all sorts of stupid precautions to dispose of it. Part of the damage control was posting a sign about Ecoli where the juice normally was. So we posted a sign directly next to that in the pastry case, too.
“all ecoli infected pastry 50% off”
When folks asked what was infected, we told them that we weren’t sure, but that we would gladly refund 50% of their money if and when they got sick.
I think we actually sold quite a bit.

I’m not a fan of pranks and practical jokes. Too often I think they’re a sign of suppressed hostility. However, one that was relatively harmless really cracked me up, though it didn’t involve me. See this scuptor’s story of Polly Merclay.

You write, “Arlene took some footage that I am certain would rival The Blair Witch Project for most nauseating camera work on an independent film. I would pay a lot of money to see that footage now, but I havenâ€™t seen Arlene since I graduated college and have no idea where to find her.”

What a great prank! And truly, as the poor sad soul that I am, I always feel bad for mean pranks. So I love this one–baffling, but not cruel. I would have felt very confused if you’d arrived at my door, as though everyone else in the world expected their pizza to be delivered by a human-sized piece of pizza and I’d simply never been informed. It would likely bother me for ages!

I would probably just waaaayyy overtip anyone who came to my door dressed as a large piece of food. Because that would be the suckiest job ever.

In High School my best friend since 3rd grade had a boyfriend who two-timed her with his supposedly “ex” girlfriend. In fact, the “ex” was out of state and he’d never broken up with her. Then he had the gall to claim my friend was lying about having been his girlfriend and that the two of them had just been “friends”. She was heartbroken about it, and one night, several beers later, we decided to TP his beloved car. Tame, you say? Old news, you say? Well, after we’d TP’d it, we hosed it down and added large quantities of silly string…and that night was one of the coldest on record. He had to drive to school the next day with the whole mess frozen to his car.

I guess that qualifies as mean, but he shouldn’t have been putting his pencil in two pockets. The jerk.